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Abstract
In 1740 the imperial nobleman Mattia Giuseppe Cresseri de Breitenstein of Trento borrowed 25,000 florins (125,000 Venetian lire) in a single transaction (Archivio di Stato di Trento, hereafter Astn, Archivio notarile, hereafter An, A. Ceschini folder, hereafter f., XVIII, 4388, 21 March 1740. 1 florin was worth 5 lire (or troni). 1 lira was equal to 20 soldi or to 240 denari). That sum nearly equaled the revenues of the tolls of Rovereto in the same year, 24,769 florins (Bonoldi, La fiera e il dazio. Economia e politica commerciale nel Tirolo del secondo Settecento. Società di studi trentini di scienze storiche, Trento, p. 67, 1999). The nobleman Leonardo Piomarta de Langenfeld, in one year (1760), lent more than 45,000 florins (225,000 lire) spread across a score of transactions, most to finance the surrounding rural communities and some as individual loans. These figures represent only a small portion of the sizable amount of capital mobilized by the informal credit market pivoted on notaries, at a time when banks did not yet exist. For years, a vast literature claimed that a country’s economic development became possible only once banks, in the form of joint-stock companies, had been created (Cameron, Financing industrialization. Elgar, Aldershot, 1972). According to this view, which became common wisdom, only specialized formal credit institutions were able—acting as financial intermediaries—to mobilize considerable financial resources at low cost. As a consequence, preindustrial economies had been for long considered limited, characterized by a weak demand and by money exchanges that occurred within restricted personal relationships. On the whole, credit supply had been considered aimed at meeting only military expenses or at financing the growing bureaucratic apparatus of modern State [Debunking this traditional view, recent studies have proved the positive interplay between public debt and real economy in pre-industrial Italy where, in some cases, state bonds nurtured a lively financial market (De Luca, Government debt and financial markets: exploring pro-cycle effects in Northern Italy during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. In: Piola Caselli F (ed) Government debts and financial markets in Europe. Pickering & Chatto, London, pp 45–66, 2008; Pezzolo, Government debts and credit markets in Renaissance Italy. In: Piola Caselli F (ed) Government debts and financial markets in Europe, Pickering & Chatto, London, pp 17–31, 2008)].
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Archivio di Stato di Trento, hereafter Astn, Archivio notarile, hereafter An, A. Ceschini folder, hereafter f., XVIII, 4388, 21 March 1740. 1 florin was worth 5 lire (or troni). 1 lira was equal to 20 soldi or to 240 denari.
Debunking this traditional view, recent studies have proved the positive interplay between public debt and real economy in pre-industrial Italy where, in some cases, state bonds nurtured a lively financial market (De Luca and Moioli 2008; Pezzolo 2008).
See the pioneering studies carried out in Paris by Hoffman et al. 1998: 499–530, 1999: 69–94, 2000. In the last decades, researches on this topic have been growing at a very great rate. For northern Italy, Milan, see De Luca (2008: 45–66, 2013: 211–34) and Levati (2000). For Verona, see Lorenzini (2016). For central Italy, see the experimental researches by Cattini (1983: 121–30, 2010: 127–42), Carboni and Fornasari (2010: 145–61), and Bolognesi (1988: 283–306). For sixteenth-century Venice, see Corazzol (1979, 1986). Renata Ago analyzed the baroque economy and the notaries’ role in Rome (Ago 1998: 75–9). For the Low Countries, see van Zanden et al. (2012: 3–22). For South America see Levy (2012). In the German territories, this topic has been investigated by Gabriele Clemens and Daniel Reupke (2009: 16–22).
See among others: Leonardi 1996; Donati 2000; Coppola 2000; Sabbatini 2000; Bonazza 2000a. The successful case of the Salvadoris studied by Cinzia Lorandini was one of the very few firms that distinguished in Trento (Lorandini 2006).
Almost 18 per cent of the territory was set up to 750 meters of altitude, it means level ground, valley floor, and hills, and this constituted the territory effectively suitable for grain cultivation. Around 40 per cent of the land was between 750 and 1500 meters, that is middle mountain, and the rest over 1500 meters, namely, high mountain (Coppola 2000: 233).
Rovereto silk industry specialized in the first phases of the whole manufacturing process, to a marked degree reeling, throwing, and to a lesser extent dyeing (Leonardi 1988: 10).
Private families’ archives constitute another significant source to draw upon in order to study private credit activities, yet they do not provide aggregate data.
See for instance the notary Africo Clementi studied by Marino Berengo (1981). In Ticino, at the border of northern Italy, notaries used to travel from one village to another, easing in this way the spread of information. Ostinelli-Lumia (1997) defined them ‘travelling notaries’.
We use the term informal to refer to professionals like notaries that were not specialized in financial activities, like for instance money changers or bankers and yet they proved crucial for credit markets.
Such contract was one of the most common ways to obtain a loan, especially before the emergence of censo consegnativo (redeemable annuity backed by a collateral) in 1569. (De Luca and Lorenzini 2018). The ‘compra cum recupera’, basically a fictitious sale, was an instrument that allowed loans, by escaping the usury laws, since no interest—at least officially—was charged. De facto the interest was constituted by the income yielded by the plot of land. As stated by Marco Cattini, such an operation was very risky for sellers/borrowers, because only in 1 case out of 20 the land was regained (Cattini 1983: 127). Even also after the legitimization of censo consegnativo, these old instruments were widely used. In Trento—as above mentioned—it was very common still in the late eighteenth century.
In the case of the census, the contract specifies that it refers to the legitimation of censo consegnativo by the bull issued in 1569 by Pope Pious V. The Papal reform allowed interest rate on lent money, but at specific conditions: it had to be backed by a collateral (real estate), it could not exceed a maximum cap (7 per cent) and it had to be signed before a notary. The most innovative aspect of this instrument was its redeemability, namely it allowed the debtor to regain the full property of the collateral, once he had paid back the debt, see De Luca and Lorenzini (2018), Alonzi (2005: 88). As for the previous contracts (irredeemable annuity), see Alonzi (2008). Sometimes, along with censo passivo, the so-called livello affrancabile was used; that is a very similar instrument more widespread in the nearby Republic of Venice (Corazzol 1979, 1986).
The censo was created in order to defend small owners from the confiscation of their land, which was a diffused phenomenon and a way undertaken by the new emerging classes to enlarge their properties (Alonzi 2011:19).
As widely known, bans on usury had gradually been smoothed by the Church since the Middle Ages. Religious institutions, particularly the Regular Orders, practiced themselves an intense as well as profitable credit activity. Literature on this theme is vast, see among others: Vismara (2004); Munro (2003: 505–62); Barile (2008: 835–74); Felloni (2008: 93–149); Ceccarelli (2005: 3–23); Mainoni (2005: 129–58).
The original document states: ‘onninamente necessaria, ed essenziale a questo contratto; altrimenti mancando il fruttifero fondo specialmente obbligato all’annuo prò, mancherebbe secondo la comune sentenza il titolo reale di poterlo esigere, e sarebbe il contratto una vera usura mascherata colmanto del livello’, (Pedrinelli 1768: 44). As above mentioned, the livello affrancabile was very common in the State of Venice, yet it was also used in the nearby territories, like Trentino.
The document literally refers to: ‘niun’altro obbligate overo ipotecate e di valere il suddetto capitale et il terzo di più’, Astn, An, B. G. Battisti, f. XXX, Rovereto 23 Mar.1760.
The contract says: ‘cautando e assicurando detti Zanella e Probizer in e sopra tutti e cadauno dei beni presenti e futuri di detto suo principale Boldironi in genere e in specie sopra li legnami mercantili di ragione dello stesso Boldironi’, Astn, An, B.G. Battisti, f. XVII, 27 May 1750, Rovereto. Emphasis added.
Such financial instruments, which became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s, consist, broadly stated, of purchasing a company using debt secured by the enterprise itself.
At that time 100 florins would buy about 540 kilograms of wheat (Grandi et al. 1978: 9–10). A 100 kilograms of wheat yielded about 80 kg of bread (Guenzi 1982: 77).
The Monte di Pietà was active in Rovereto, while in Trento, although it was officially opened till the end of the eighteenth century, it did not actually operate. It would be newly founded in 1883.
See for instance the 10,000 florins (50,000 lire) borrowed by Avio that were employed to pay back five debts that it had drawn with Giovanni Antonio de Rosmini in the 1730s. Astn, An, L. Garavetti, f. I, 18 Dec. 1760, Rovereto.
These communities’ debts were often backed by entire portions of mountains, which represented a great resource in terms of wood, used as combustibile but much more as marketable good.
In ancien régime societies, dowry was one of the most powerful means to climb the social hierarchy, hence a large part of the population invested on it through indebtedness.
Astn, An, G. Bettini, f. XIV, 28 Jan. 1770, Rovereto. From 1765, the reference parameter for cocoon price was the ‘tassa’ (literally ‘tax’) of Rovereto, which was articulated into a ‘high tax’ for the best quality cocoons, and ‘low tax’ for lower quality cocoons (Lorandini 2006: 239).
In both cities, Regular Orders did not play a central role. A similar—not prevailing—quota was that of monasteries and convents of Verona who injected to the local credit market from 11 to 28 per cent of the total money supply (Lorenzini 2016b: 198).